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explored the role of genetic variegation and mutation in natural evolution.5 In
addition to searching for coherent patterns of genetic regularity in com plants,
McClintock explored the seemingly chaotic patterns of com kernels as well.
Out of the differentiated chaos of kernel arrangements, McClintock found
larger patterns of regularity, recognizing that the deviations within such
patterns were not only inevitable, but developmentally favorable, often leading
to vital degrees of organic innovation.
Evolution itself is made possible by the tendency toward innovation that
marks both the micro-organic and the organic worlds.
In contrast to Freud’s
belief that Eros creates “the one” out of “the more than one,” eco-erotic
differentiation tends to make “more than one” out of “the one” through a
process of spontaneous complexification.
Throughout the evolutionary
process, a tendency towards self-differentiation continually opens up new
avenues for organic development. Without differentiation, the process of
natural evolution would be reduced to mere stasis, repetition, and circularity. It
would be what systems theorists call a “closed system” in which organic
evolution would never have gotten off the proverbial ground.6
Yet the tendency toward spontaneity in nature should not be conflated
with an idea of a randomness or incoherence which precludes an organic logic
or order. In the same way that unity does not entail the sacrifice of diversity,
diversity does not require the breakdown of all coherence or unity. Rather, it is
precisely the patterns of regularity within the natural world which lay the
ground for creative deviation from those patterns. The developmental process
toward ever greater levels of differentiation and complexity takes place within
larger patterns that are often marked by dimensions of order, balance, and
symmetry. And as McClintock illustrates, out of seemingly chaotic or random
genetic deviations within com plants, emerge new patterns of stability and
regularity; patterns that, in turn, serve as the ground for further creative
deviation.
In this way, there is a dialectical relationship between chaos and
order, in which the spontaneous tendency toward disorder is predicated on
both a background of order, as well as a reach for new levels of integration
and coherence.
Degrees of spontaneity in nature play a crucial and creative role in
opening up possibilities for new levels of complex development. This
innovative tendency stems from the tendency within nature for organisms to
become something else, to complicate things, to make natural evolution
innovatively ‘messy’. In turn, the breaking of patterns also makes for diverse
eco-communities7
which
display
a
greater
chance
for
survival
and
sustainability. Ecology has shown that the more complex and diversified a
particular eco-community, the greater the chance for species to survive such
changes as climatic variation or the introduction of new insects or animal